by Sam Zadgan
Driving back through the street towards the church, he sped up—he had focus now. He drove past the church, and arrived at a dirt path, with dense trees on both sides, which he remembered from the previous day when they headed towards the fountain and pool. He left the car behind as he walked down the path to what he expected to be the fountain. After a few minutes of hiking he noticed a clearing, and as he got closer he was met with a similar shocking sight, another cliff edge.
Further unsettling was that to the left he saw a shallow drop to a beach below. He then followed the rocks rise up to the mountain range: the very same mountains he saw from the previous vantage point. He turned his head to the right, and much the same as the left, the coastline seemed to meet up with the end points he could see from the previous lookout.
He had to take a moment to question his first thoughts, as the conclusion seemed ridiculous. However, the more he tried to dismiss it, the more he realised his efforts were futile. He was in fact on an island.
The more this reality dawned and sank in, the more James felt he was losing his mind. The lines between reality and dreams were disappearing, as was his mental stability. In an effort to compose his senses, he closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to calm his nerves and centre his thoughts. Upon opening his eyes he was not met with a different sight, but a slightly altered resolve.
He headed back into town; apart from the missing people, the decay and boarded up shops, nothing was amiss, including the church. In fact, he now gave more attention to the fact that the church was the only aspect of the town that had not changed from yesterday. Just then he noticed that the bar in the hotel still had drinks on the shelves. This was something of a welcomed surprise.
He retrieved the bottle of Bushmills Black, brushed away the dirt and popped the cork; it smelled fine and he had a taste, followed by a big gulp. The familiarity of the taste and the bottle was the only real experience he had that day and it gave him the perspective and confidence he needed to go on. With the newfound vitality, he decided to investigate the church.
He arrived at the steps of the church, not a detail out of place, yet the consistency was less comforting than he would have thought. He climbed the steps and, like the previous night, the Gateway Stone had no impact on him. He pushed the doors, at first struggling to move them, until one of the hinges gave way and both doors swung open and came to a sudden crash against the inner walls of the church. Inside, the sights were the same, the same gods in the circle, the same disturbing patterns on the windows and walls, but the cleanliness and freshness of the statues was missing.
Today the contents of the church looked old, with cracks and chips from the years of decay and lack of maintenance in general. There was nothing more to learn from the church beside the fact that the church had suffered the same fate as the rest of the town.
As he turned to leave he heard a footstep. He swivelled around on the balls of his feet as quickly as he could, ready for anything. Standing at the far end of the circle was the red-haired woman, dressed in the white cotton robe. James was astounded by her presence, but his mind was slightly more prepared for strange occurrences today than any other time in his life.
The-red haired woman approached James. “Why are you here, James? Why did you come to Larwock?” she said as she circled around him.
“We took a wrong turn…” he said.
“We, James? You are here by yourself,” the red-haired woman interrupted.
James felt less sure of himself, but was quick to get his thoughts on the right track.
“By myself…no…no, I came here with Tamara, we got married and we were going down to Melbourne for a week…and we took a wrong…”
Just then James stopped and started to digest what he was saying. Thoughts started circling his brain, thoughts that were not once there, he questioned himself. “Who is Tamara?” and “When did I get married?”
The red-haired woman now stood face to face with James. “Why did you come back?” she whispered.
James was completely perplexed by the line of questioning.
“What do you mean? Who do you think I am?”
“James Green!” she whispered again.
James recalled the reference to the surname; he’d heard about Mr Green from Sammy at the café. He was the misfit leader of the coven of witches that escaped and found solace in this town. He was the man that protected the town by conjuring up all types of demons and spirits to roam the woods. The man who imagined these creatures, which were then turned into statues for the church. Now, she was saying that he was James Green, but how could this be? How could there be any truth to this?
In his bewildered state James stumbled back out of the church. He stepped onto the Gateway Stone and a sudden onset of vertigo thrust him off balance and he leapt off the deck and landed head-first on the road, blacking out on impact.
6. The final feast
“Wake up, James…James…are you okay? James!”
His vision was blurred, but he caught glimpses of her angelic face and felt the warm caress of her hands on his face. Like a mother’s familiar touch, he felt the safety and comfort that only a loved one could provide.
Tamara stroked his face again, and noticing his eyes flickering open, she smiled. “James…you’re back…are you okay?” she said with a tender tone.
James finally opened his eyes and his vision was restored, but the pain he felt shooting up from his parietal all the way to his sinus took its place. He lifted his head with discomfort and was aided to a seated position. Reaching to the back of his head, he felt the warm blood that had started to trickle down through his hair.
James gazed up at Tamara, a vision of beauty and relief, but then his eyes wandered to her right—the red-haired woman, Harold and Sammy. He immediately jumped to his feet.
“Tamara, we have to go…NOW!” James took Tamara by complete surprise with his urgent tone.
“But James, our car has punctured tyres and John won’t have tyres till tomorrow… What’s wrong, James? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’ve seen much, much worse!” he said.
Tamara was concerned, firstly about his uncharacteristic reaction, but also there was something more to his demand, something urgent. She was inclined to go along with him and ask for explanations later. She nodded and began to follow him as he turned away.
“You can’t go anywhere now. Please, James, you’re hurt. Why don’t you rest the night and leave tomorrow…” the red-haired women tried to reason with him.
James turned to her with disgust; every word from her mouth was like poison to him and he didn’t restrain his emotions this time.
“You…you’re a deceitful snake.” He spewed the insult from his mouth like the vilest vomit.
“James, calm down, mate. I don’t know what happened, but when you and Tamara were trying to get into the church you slipped and fell on your head…you’ve been knocked out for about ten minutes now. I think it’s best you take a seat, maybe lie down…don’t you think?” Sammy was trying to calm the situation, which had obviously gotten out of control.
James had no time for excuses, however. “I’ve seen everything…I know what this place is…and we are getting out of here…”
Before James could continue, both Tamara and James were startled by the ginger-haired man, Steve, who stepped out of the hotel and was upon the couple.
“Hello Mr Green.” Steve’s words rang in James’s ear like church bells.
“What?” James turned to Steve. “No, I’m not Mr Green. My name is James Diamine…”
Steve scratched his temple, and then he pointed to the red-haired woman. “Well, the good lady there said that you were.”
James peered over his shoulder at the red-haired woman again. “I knew I wasn’t dreaming…you WITCH!” But his victorious revelation was soon extinguished.
“James, your mum’s maiden name was Green, right?” Tamara said as if she had known this was coming all along.<
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James’s head began spinning and the truth behind all of this was now starting to come to light. He was part of the bloodline. Although he didn’t want to admit it to himself, his dreams were not merely dreams, they were all visions of the truth. The red-haired woman was a witch who somehow had controlled his mind with all those images. He returned his focus to his new bride, his one love, Tamara, but her face was distorting. His brain was racing with thoughts, and it all became too much to process.
Tamara smiled at her husband, but soon it turned into laughter. Was this real, or was he back in his dreams? Why was Tamara laughing along with the others? The sound of the laughter became louder and louder until it became the only thing he could hear. His vision blurred as Tamara released his hand and he seemed to spiral in the middle of the road. He was surrounded by the townsfolk, who looked like a pack of hungry wolves staring at their wounded prey.
“I am Mr Green…I am Mr Green…I am Mr Green…” James kept repeating it over and over again.
His legs lost the strength to hold his weight. But before he fell to the ground, Steve lifted him over his shoulder and took him into the hotel, where the other town folk and Tamara followed.
Inside the lobby of the Elder Inn, Tamara lifted the carpet to reveal a large pentagram engraved into the floor boards. Steve placed James in the middle of the circle. James was delirious, his mind warped and twisted by the events to its limits. His conscious mind slipped back and lost control over his body, his thoughts and reactions. He laid limp on the floor staring at the ceiling.
In this wild state it wasn’t long before the carved outlines of the gods on the ceiling took shape and reanimated. Twisting in the air around him, they seemed pleased with his arrival and approving of what was about to take place.
James shifted his view to Steve, who was now walking towards him with a long sharp knife. He could feel a voice inside him willing him, pleading with him, to stand up and run, to raise his feet and kick Steve, but none of these cries were acted upon. James witnessed his shirt being torn apart and with the precision of a surgeon, Steve cut a line from the top of his chest all the way down to his pelvis.
James was beyond pain, or anything else a normal human would feel, his mind in a place that only dead men wander and only madness survives. He could hear mutterings, but the voice of the red-haired woman was the most noticeable at this time as she spoke ahead of everyone.
“Ahriman, we praise you, and offer this soul back to you again. We thank you for blessing us with your servant Tamara, for it was she who brought back the descendant of our leader, the great communicator, so we can feast on his flesh and send his soul back to Ahriman’s elder gods…”
In the meantime, Steve had made another incision from one kidney to the other, and had fallen back into the circle. The red-haired woman kneeled to the floor over James’s dissected body. She gently ran her hand into his body and cupped it, collecting a small amount of blood. With lustful eyes and insatiable thirst she drank the blood and raised her bloodied hands in the air.
“Ahriman, take this soul back and through his flesh, grant us our immortality and your protection!”
James began to fade, but his consciousness was returning and the madness was subsiding in the last moments of life. The crowd chanted in a foreign tongue as they slowly crept towards him, their eyes growing with hunger and rabid aggression. Among them he spotted Tamara; she was no different from the others. The horde of animals were moments away and he didn’t fight the darkness that was now starting to approach. He closed his eyes, but the darkness was not so quick to arrive.
The pain from the gashes made their way through all the receptors in his brain, the recognition was coming too early, and he wished this would all end.
But before it did, he opened his eyes one last time, only to get one last glimpse of the pack of ravenous cannibals descending into his open torso.
Calling for help
~
She recalled five years ago, almost to the day, she started her journey of discovery. The discovery of her father’s only aim in life, the mythical history he was chasing to bring to reality. She wondered whether today would be bearing the fruit of all the research over the past five years. As she sat by the phone, building the courage to make the phone call, she reminisced about the first time she learnt about the horrors and queer life that lay beyond her own simple reality.
Shannon arrived at the house of her late father in the morning. She had been called a week earlier to come back to her childhood house in the south coast town of Jervis Bay. She didn’t arrive in time for the funeral, not for a man that she had despised from an early age. But her family home was to be sold, and to avoid the cost of clearing the house, she decided to come back and clear it out herself.
The first time her father had left the family was when she was only eight. He would do this twice every year at least, going for periods of a month or longer. Her mother, while she was alive, would make up stories to alleviate Shannon’s immediate emotional response. But once her mother passed away, there were no more stories. Shannon would be left to her own devices as a teenager, whilst her father would disappear randomly.
Even when her father was at home, their relationship was non-existent. He would tend to his own duties, leaving her to look after the house and herself. To her credit she managed to put herself through school and secure a place at the University of New South Wales. This was perfect as it was her way of escaping the house, the town and her father. She would have a new start in Sydney and rebuild her life, independent of the dysfunctional family unit that she was a part of.
But now she was back in the house and those memories were starting to flood back. Every item in that house was almost as she had left it and reminded her of an event or an emotion. Besides the few that brought her mother back to life, the rest were memories that she had tried to forget over the last ten years or so.
She started in her bedroom, a room she spent most of her life in. Not in the same way as most children; in this case, Shannon hardly ever left her bedroom. In here, she found a sanctuary, where she could pretend to have a normal life and a father who loved her. Outside those walls was a world that was not perfect or remotely close to it.
There was, however, one room in the house that she had never ventured into: the library, a small room where her father spent most of his time and years in. Outside being vacant from the family, the rest of the time he would spend in this room, staying up till late at night. Shannon never asked or wanted to know what he did in that room and was happy not being involved. Today, however, the curiosity was growing in her mind, and although she kept to her room most of the day, she knew at some stage she would have to enter that room.
She stayed overnight at the old house, and her boyfriend, Edward, joined her for the night. They planned to stay there for the weekend, to salvage as much as possible before the cleaners would come and clear out the house and get it ready for sale.
The next day, she knew, would be the day she would venture into that unknown room at the back of the house. It faced on to the back garden, but the windows were painted black, with two or three coats of thick tar-like paint. No light could get in and no prying eyes could see what was happening in that room. From the inside a door with a lock kept her and her mother out of that room for as long as they lived in the house.
Edward had to use some brute force to smash the door open, but it took little effort given the age of the wood and house. Inside was a sight that she had not expected. A mess of papers, maps and books lay open and in random order on the table and floor. On first impression there was no order to the madness, but after a few minutes, she found some kind of pattern.
Each map lay next to some notes that were scattered around it. These maps seemed to be of one particular area, a town called Bowral, west of Wollongong. But also, each map seemed to be of a different time in history; some were ripped out of historical books, some were hand drawn, and some were more recent print-outs fr
om computer generated images.
She picked up a random set of notes, and began reading.
“Today I will set off for the third time. This map shows a position in the bushland off the western border of Bowral. I’m not sure if this is the right way; right now I am trying to eliminate directions rather than find the right one. The Aboriginal tribes that lived nearby originally travelled on this particular path. When I spoke to Geoff, he told me that his father had told him stories when he was younger about the death trail. A trail that the evil ones would walk to their death, once they were outcast from their tribe.
“They believed in this so much, that this area of bushland became no-man’s land, and if anyone did by accident venture into the bushland during a hunt they would die a few days later. Back in those days they believed that evil spirits touched them. Geoff told me that the tribes were so convinced of the evil, that they would will themselves to death.”
Shannon was completely perplexed at what she had read, more so, however, when she read the date at the top of the page, a date she recalls her father leaving. She remembered this one because her school netball team was due to play in the state championship for under thirteens. This was the most exciting event of her life, at the time, and to this day she remembered the feeling of winning the game, only to find that her father was not there to congratulate her.
She moved onto another set of notes, inspecting the date first, and correlating it again with another time that he had left the family for a prolonged period of time. Similar mysterious notes about finding an area on a map and trying to discover something followed.
This was proving to be a momentous discovery for Shannon. After many years she was suddenly getting an insight into her father and what he spent, as it seemed, most of his life chasing. From first impressions, Shannon had concluded he was obviously mad.